Edward VII Read online

  Next came Edward Lycett Green, “the emotional force behind the accusations.” Lycett Green stated that he had seen Gordon-Cumming twice push counters over the chalk line when he should not have done so; he had considered accusing Gordon-Cumming at the time, but decided against it because he “did not like to make a scene before ladies.”29 At points in the examination Lycett Green contradicted the course of events outlined by Stanley Wilson, and his evidence seemed to be remarkably shaky. Given that Edward Lycett Green had first raised the alarm over Gordon-Cumming’s behavior, it “seemed remarkable that he, the prime mover in the affair, seemed unable to say anything without qualifying it with some such remark as, ‘I don’t exactly remember’. The hedging by the principal accuser certainly weakens the defendants’ case. Lycett Green’s refusal to remember anything seemed almost like a deliberate policy.”30

  Mrs. Lycett Green followed her husband into the witness box, and confirmed that she had seldom played baccarat before; although she had seen nothing untoward on the first night, she accepted her husband’s secondhand version of events as the truth, but did not agree that as a result she had been watching Gordon-Cumming. Mrs. Lycett Green provided a different series of events from those outlined by other witnesses, but stated that she thought she had seen Gordon-Cumming illicitly add to his stake.

  After Mrs. Lycett Green had finished giving evidence, her place was taken by her mother, Mrs. Wilson. Examined by Russell, Mrs. Wilson stated that she thought she saw Gordon-Cumming cheat twice by adding additional counters to his stake. When Clarke cross-examined her, he asked if anyone had placed a stake of £15. Mrs. Wilson stated that only her husband had placed such an amount, but Wilson had not played on either night as he disliked both the game and high-stakes gambling. Havers, in his account of the case, regarded it as “rather shocking really, considering that she had sworn to tell the truth … to find her coming out with this … lie spoken, apparently, with the complete self-assurance that the other members of her family had shown.”31

  The final witness called for the defense was Lord Coventry. He was one of the nonplaying members of the party who had witnessed no cheating, understood little about gambling, and, as a non-soldier, knew nothing of Article 41 of the Queen’s Regulations. When cross-examined by Clarke, Coventry confirmed that as far as he was aware, the witnesses had all decided to watch Gordon-Cumming’s play on the second night, despite their claims to the contrary.

  The Daily Chronicle noted the “obvious doubts which tainted the accusations of the defendants … they and the Prince’s flunkeys all contradicted each other on material points.”32 Russell’s summing up for the defense took the remainder of the day and the court adjourned until the following Monday, when he continued. He referred to a possible thirteen acts of cheating that the defendants were alleged to have seen, and that “we have five persons who believe he cheated, swearing unmistakably they saw him cheat, and telling you how they saw him cheat.”33

  Once Russell had completed his speech for the defendants, Clarke gave his reply, considered by the Daily Chronicle to be “a very brilliant, powerful, wily and courageous effort.”34 Clarke pointed to the many inaccuracies in both the written statement prepared by Coventry and Williams, and in the memories of all concerned. He went on to outline that there had been celebrations at the races—the prince’s horse had won on the first day, and the St. Leger had been run on the second—combined with the full hospitality of the Wilsons to consider: according to the court reporter for The Times, Clarke “alluded to the profuse hospitalities of Tranby Croft, not with any idea of suggesting drunkenness, but as indicating that the guests might not be in a state for accurate observation.”35 He also drew the jury’s attention to the gaps in the defendants’ memories, where they were so precise about some of their observations but could not remember other key details.36 Clarke lampooned some of the involved parties, referring to Lycett Green as “a Master of Hounds who hunts four days a week,”37 while Stanley Wilson was a spoiled wastrel from a rich family who lacked initiative and drive. Above all, Clarke indicated, the defendants, with the exception of Stanley Wilson, saw what they had been told to expect: “the eye saw what it expected or sought to see, there was only one witness who saw Sir William Gordon-Cumming cheat without expecting it—young Mr Stanley Wilson. The others were all told there had been cheating, and expected to see it.”38 At the end of his reply, Clarke’s speech was greeted by applause among those in the galleries. The British lawyer Heber Hart later wrote that Clarke’s speech was “probably the most conspicuous example of the moral courage and independence of the Bar that has occurred in modern times,”39 while Clarke considered it to be one of the best speeches he ever made.

  When Sir Edward Clarke sat down after completing his speech to the jury, there was a brief clatter of applause from throughout the court. The judge, Lord Coleridge, uttered a fierce and angry cry of “Silence!” This was unusual for him as he had a mild and quiet manner. “This is not a theatre!”40 According to one newspaper, there was a retort from the back of the court, “You have made it so!”41As soon as Clarke made to leave the courtroom, “the overcharged feelings of the spectators again broke out and, unchecked this time, they gave way to their feelings.”42

  On the eighth day of the trial, Bertie did not attend court. He went to Ascot instead, and the waggish Star commented that the racing would be a trivial affair compared with the struggle for life and honor now reaching its climax at the Royal Courts of Justice.

  On the following day, June 9, Lord Coleridge began his four-hour summing up. His summary was a response to Clarke’s, and he went through on a point-by-point basis to discredit the attorney general’s speech, although in places his description “was directly contrary to the evidence.”43 The jury retired at 3:25 P.M., and every eye in the courtroom fixed on Gordon-Cumming, “the man whose social life hung in the balance.”44 Gordon-Cumming coped well with this ordeal. “He clasped his gloved hands on his stick, and with composed features waited … like a figure of stone.”45

  The jury came back after just thirteen minutes, and Gordon-Cumming turned his cold, gray eyes upon them as the foreman told Lord Coleridge: “We find for the plaintiffs.” Hissing and booing broke out from the public and the junior bar. A telegram was dispatched to the prince immediately by Mrs. Wilson, who had brought a form with her for just this purpose. The hissing and booing continued and became louder as the jury filed out of their box. Gordon-Cumming remained seated, “perhaps dazed for the moment with the shock of the stupendous doom which those dreadful words had conveyed; and then, without a word, without a tremor, walked squarely to the well of the court and disappeared into the world that will know him no more.”46

  Scenes outside court following a verdict are often dramatic, and this was no exception. It was not a popular verdict. “The defendants, who had the grace not to smile and who behaved with perfect dignity, were so fiercely mobbed that they had to take refuge under Mr Lewis’ sheltering wing in Mr Justice North’s court, and then get quietly away.”47

  According to Reynolds News, the Wilsons were encircled by a large crowd in the narrow corridors outside the courtroom, and “hissed and hooted and jeered in the most excited fashion.”48 Fearing for their safety, they took refuge in a neighboring courtroom while the people outside crowded around the doors and waited for them to come out.

  Bertie escaped the possibility of public humiliation at the Royal Courts of Justice, but at Ascot the crowds were waiting for him. As the royal procession arrived at one o’clock, with the rich scarlet and gold of the liveries of the royal servants glittering in the green landscape, no cheer greeted Lord Coventry, Master of the Buckhounds, as he trotted in front of the royal carriage on a big bay horse. There was no ovation for the royal party, indeed, never had it been received with such coldness. As the Prince and Princess of Wales were driving around the course, there were catcalls and booing and cries of “Oi! Baccarat! Have you bought your counters?” “There’s ten pounds more to pay here,
sir,” and “If you can’t back a horse, baccarat!”49 Princess May of Teck, who was in one of the carriages, described it as “a most unpleasant ordeal.”50 Only Bertie, cutting a fine figure in his dark gray frock coat, seemed to emerge unscathed.51 On hearing the verdict, he commented that “George Lewis tells me that the Solicitor-General’s speech will give the Radicals 100,000 votes at the General Election.”52

  The newspapers had a field day. The Times “profoundly regretted that the Prince should have been in any way mixed up, not only in the case, but in the social circumstances which prepared the way for it.”53 The Review of Reviews condemned Bertie as “not only a gambler but as a wastrel and whoremonger.”54

  The prime minister, Lord Salisbury, subsequently recommended that Bertie should avoid playing baccarat for six months and then leak a letter to the press stating that the trial had been a lesson to him and he no longer permitted baccarat to be played in his presence.55 Meanwhile, the queen suggested that Bertie write an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury expressing his disapproval of gambling. While Bertie and Lord Salisbury dismissed this suggestion out of hand, Bertie wrote a private letter to the archbishop, expressing his feelings about “the horror of gambling,” which he regarded as the equivalent of drunkenness as a social evil, “one of the greatest curses that a country can be afflicted with.”56

  After this, Bertie stopped playing baccarat and took up whist instead, which he also played for money.

  A notable feature of the Tranby Croft trial was that, for the first time, the inner workings of the Marlborough House set went on show. The trial revealed that the heir to the throne sat up half the night gambling for massive amounts of money with his cronies; that one of them had been accused of cheating; and that there had been an attempted cover-up. The fact that the Prince of Wales gambled at all was regarded as scandalous by earnest churchgoers, but was seen as endearingly raffish in the opinion of Bertie’s working-class subjects; here was further evidence that Bertie, with his smoking, drinking, and womanizing, was indeed “one of us.”

  The real victim in all of this was Gordon-Cumming. Following the trial, the leader in The Times stated that “He is condemned by the verdict of the jury to social extinction. His brilliant record is wiped out and he must, so to speak, begin life again. Such is the inexorable social rule.… He has committed a mortal offence. Society can know him no more.”57

  Just like the Churchills and the Beresfords before him, Gordon-Cumming was ostracized. The difference was that Gordon-Cumming would never be allowed back into the royal circle. Anyone who spoke to Gordon-Cumming, or accepted his hospitality, would never be asked to Marlborough House again, and Bertie refused to meet anyone “who henceforth acknowledged the Scottish baronet.”58 On June 10, 1891, the day after the trial, Gordon-Cumming was dismissed from the army and blackballed from his clubs, the Carlton, Guards’, Marlborough, and Turf. “So the vengeance was thorough.”59 On the same day, Gordon-Cumming married his fiancée, Florence Garner, by special license at Holy Trinity Church, Chelsea. Gordon-Cumming was faultlessly turned out in a frock coat and pearl-gray gloves, but looked fatigued, while his tiny vivacious bride wore a dove-gray walking dress with a black straw hat. Florence walked up the aisle bubbling with good spirits, a contrast to Gordon-Cumming, but he threw off his gloom as the service proceeded.60

  When the couple returned to Gordon-Cumming’s estate in Scotland, he was greeted by cheering locals who pulled their carriage through the streets by hand. “That the prince and society considered him a social outcast mattered not at all to his people.”61

  It mattered to Gordon-Cumming, though. Despite the beautiful estate of Altyre and the gloomy ancestral castle of Gordonstoun, the presence of a loving wife and local friends, Gordon-Cumming hankered for society. He threw a number of house parties, which Florence hated, especially when one of the guests tried to seduce her and Gordon-Cumming responded, with complete lack of empathy, “My dear child, don’t be so silly. You must learn to take care of yourself!”62 Florence died at fifty-two, exhausted by anxiety and disappointment, and Gordon-Cumming followed her to the grave eight years later, aged eighty-one, having lived “outside society” for forty years.63 According to his daughter Elma, who later became a successful writer, Gordon-Cumming “never lost that touch of swagger in his walk, the hint of scorn for lesser mortals, the suggestion that he was irresistible. He had worn it for so long that neither trouble nor disgrace nor old age could change his habit.”64

  Opinion is divided as to whether Gordon-Cumming cheated or not. The Duke of Portland, William Cavendish-Bentinck, Bertie’s master of the horse, wrote in his memoirs that:

  I knew Bill Cumming very well, and for a long time liked and admired him, both as a gallant soldier and as a fine sportsman.… A friend of mine who went tiger shooting with him was loud in his praise of Bill’s sportsmanship, bravery and unselfishness … but he had one serious failing: he could not play fair at cards.… In the days of duelling, it would have been a brave man who accused Bill of any such thing, as he was a dead shot with a revolver or a pistol. If England had always been at war, or if Bill had always been in pursuit of big-game, everyone would have thought, quite rightly, that no better soldier, or finer fellow in every way, ever existed.65

  Gordon-Cumming’s problems began when he challenged his accusers. Had he been content to accept a lifetime ban on gambling, he might have maintained his status. The case also points up the disparity between the nouveau riche Wilsons and old money. The Wilsons, hell-bent on convicting Gordon-Cumming, wrecked his career. The Times saw the Wilsons as little less than murderers. “With or without their will, [the Wilson family] have been the cause of the social death of a distinguished man. When a man dies physically those who have to do with him remain in seclusion for a time. Those can hardly do less who are indirectly responsible for this far more tragic calamity, the ruin of a fine career.”66

  Daisy Brooke, blamed for Gordon-Cumming’s downfall by Mina Beresford, remembered him as “more sinned against than sinning … a constant friend, but he cut us all off in his retirement, and I often had sad thoughts of him and always kept a warm corner in my heart for him”67 Perhaps it is here that we have the real reason for Gordon-Cumming’s exclusion from society. In September 1890, three days before the events at Tranby Croft, Bertie had returned early from traveling in Europe. He visited Harriet Street to discover Daisy Brooke “in Gordon-Cumming’s arms.” What better way, then, to remove Gordon-Cumming for good, than by accusing him of cheating at cards? We have seen Bertie’s ruthless streak at work before. Here it was again. Or in the words of one of his circle: “Bertie never forgives.”68 Gordon-Cumming had been taught a painful, and permanent, lesson.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE SOCIALITE SOCIALIST

  I was as one who had found a new, a real world.

  —DAISY, COUNTESS OF WARWICK

  In July 1891, before the dust from the Tranby Croft trial had time to settle, Bertie found himself on the brink of yet another scandal. Charlie Beresford, still furious that he and his wife had been excluded from society, lay stewing on his yacht in the Mediterranean. He was further enraged by the fact that his former mistress, Daisy, was now the lover of the Prince of Wales.

  From his state room on the Undaunted, Charlie Beresford wrote a threatening letter to Bertie. It was a terrifying ultimatum: Bertie must restore Lady Beresford to her rightful place in society, or he would publish Daisy’s letter. Charlie Beresford was using the latest weapon in his war against the Prince of Wales: bad publicity. To ensure that it could not be missed, Charlie Beresford sent his letter to the prime minister, Lord Salisbury. Perhaps Charlie thought that the prime minister would put pressure on the Prince of Wales to resolve the situation, rather than endure disgrace.

  Once again, Charlie referred to Bertie as a “blackguard,” and not only that but also “a coward!” Dueling may have been outlawed, “but there is a more just way of getting right done than can duelling and that is—publicity!�
�1 Charlie Beresford sent the letter to his wife, Mina, instructing her to forward it to Lord Salisbury. Mina duly obliged and Lord Salisbury intervened in the matter immediately, and not without good reason. Mina had written to Lord Salisbury making it clear that, not only did her husband have damning evidence to blacken the prince’s reputation, but that there was another factor at play. Mina’s sister, Lady Lucy Paget, had written a manuscript entitled Lady River, a fictionalized account of Daisy’s affair with Bertie and others, which, if published, would blacken his name even further.2 “Several people,” Lady Beresford continued, “wanted to make use of the story at the next general election, for purposes of their own.” Lady Beresford went on to say that she would accept nothing less than a public apology from the Prince of Wales for excluding her from society.

  Shaken by the reference to the next election, as any politician would be, Lord Salisbury drew on all his resources of diplomacy and wrote back to the Beresfords. Salisbury explained to Charlie that, according to “the social laws of our class”3 it would scarcely be appropriate for Charlie to disgrace his former mistress by making her affair with the Prince of Wales public. This apparently worked, as Charlie agreed to write to Bertie again in a less aggressive manner. However, Mina Beresford was in a less conciliatory mood, and the damage had already been done. Mina’s sister Lucy had begun to circulate the manuscript of Lady River. This titillating account of Daisy’s misdemeanors proved impossible to suppress and provided much scandalized delight when read aloud in society drawing rooms, although Daisy herself remained blissfully unaware of the lurid document.4 The biggest victim of this vicious attack on Daisy’s reputation was not Daisy herself, or even Bertie, though he must have groaned in dismay when he heard about it. It was Bertie’s wife, the long-suffering Princess Alexandra, who was humiliated beyond belief by further evidence of her husband’s philandering. Discreet affairs were something that every royal wife must tolerate. But now this, so soon after Tranby Croft? Alix had learned about the pamphlet while on holiday with her family in Denmark. Due to return to London to celebrate Bertie’s fiftieth birthday, Alix snubbed her husband by traveling out to the Crimea to visit her sister Dagmar, now Tsarina Marie Feodorovna of Russia.